Welcome to the Fillmore Central School Living Environment Wiki

Course Information

New York State Living Environment is the name we use for the Regents Biology course in New York State. Curriculum wise, this course is very diverse, but mainly focuses its attention on human interactions with our environments. As you will see, this focus means we will spend a good amount of time on ecology and human interactions/impacts on our world, with additional units dealing with genetics and heredity, evolution, cells and cell biology, and human body systems, with a focus on how we maintain our own internal environments, a phenomenon known as homeostasis.

This class meets once per day for approximately 44 minutes. During that time, students are asked to take notes on the content, and to answer a series of questions (daily objectives). Each student will be expected to maintain their own notebook, which will be checked each Friday (5 points per day). Additional assignments and activities will be given during class, but each assignment will be mirrored here for student access. All worksheets will be made available via the internet to make record keeping (for parents and students) more simple. Please feel free to use the resources given here to answer the questions where applicable.

Laboratory Requirement

A major requirement of this course is the completion of 1200 minutes of laboratory bench time with satisfactory reports written for each individual lab given. To ease this requirement, we will provide each student with a laboratory manual with labs and report templates. These manuals must be maintained by the student throughout the year, and will be kept in E240 to reduce chance of loss or misplacement of the manual. This is a very important aspect of the course. Students failing to meet this requirement can be kept from sitting for the Regents exam in June.

Classroom Rules

In this class, there are only a few real rules. They are carefully chosen and worded to allow maximum learning, but to allow some flexibility.

1. Talking: I expect there to be no talking during my class unless you are called upon. To be called upon, you need to raise your hand. Yelling out answers is unacceptable.
2. Touching: I expect that no student touches another student. I also expect that you keep your hands to yourself as far as my things are concerned. Teachers give up enough personal space to students. Don't handle everything on my desk. My desk is my personal space. Don't stand by it, or sit behind it, without my express permission.
3. Lateness: Unacceptable. I will record your attendance every period at the beginning of the period. Be there on time, or the 3rd late appearance earns you a discipline report. Being late is rude.
4. Respect: More than anything else, I demand that you respect each other and me.
5. Hall Passes: There is one hall pass for this room, and a sign out sheet. If you need to go, sign out and take the pass. If you abuse this privilege it will be taken away from everyone.
6. Cell Phones: Cell phones are banned in my room. I have 0 tolerance of them being used to send a text while I am teaching. I consider it rude and a personal insult that you would even try, so expect me to take your phone, 1st offense.
7. iPods and Other Music Players: iPods and other personal music players are only allowed at certain times. I will allow them during quiet work times, or perhaps to be used as calculators (I use my own iPod that way, so why not?) No, you cannot listen in one ear while I teach. See the rule 6 for how I feel about this.

Grading Policy

I firmly believe that work not handed in does nothing to benefit the student, so this policy has been carefully designed to provide maximum reward for doing homework, even if it is egregiously late (please try not to take advantage of this..).

Late work will be penalized at a rate of 10% a day, to a maximum of 50%. You can only receive the 50% for work handed in that is complete and accurate (in other words, the maximum you can get is 50% for perfect work)